Apparently nobody realizes just how great they can be just by having an open mind and being a good person. Hating people and being cruel doesn't make you cool. It makes you a horrible person who needs to open their eyes and see that the only profitable thing is kindness. Who cares what people believe in or who they're attracted to or what color their skin is? Who cares where they come from, where they work, or how they dress? People are people, and if you pay attention to who they are, you might learn a little more about yourself.
We shouldn't be ashamed to say, "Yes, I believe in God," or "Yes, I think that person is wonderful." We shouldn't have to care about the dirty looks and the cruel words and the possible beatings in store because there shouldn't be any! I could be rainbow for all it mattered, and would that make the world love or hate me any less? If I were rainbow, would you love me? If I were disfigured or Jewish or Muslim or black or white or mentally challenged, would you love me? Would you hate me? And can you really say that it's okay for those things to matter?
Yes, we like people that are like us. But we should like them for their personality. Not just, "Oh, they hate the same people I do." "Oh, they come from the same place I do."
Sure, we all say, "They like what I like, I'll be their friend." That's cool. But if you look at who they are and how they act, and you see something wrong with that, does it matter if you're both into Nirvana? Because it shouldn't. If someone is being hurt, or teased, even jokingly teased, you should step in and stop it. Nobody deserves anyone else's scorn. We're all trying to find the right path to walk. That path isn't always clear, but I can definitely say that hurting people and judging them for anything other than how they act and what they do and who they are as a person is wrong.
It is so frustrating to live in this world today, and to hear the hatred people spew, and to hear the blunt disrespect they hurl back at those they should revere, the sharp hatred they aim at those that are different from them. Sometimes it's their parents, teaching their kids right from wrong and just getting it all mixed up. Sometimes it's the influences they come across -- music, books, games. Anything we can get our hands on, we absorb, observe, and judge, either spitting it out or drinking it in. We need to be more conscious of what we're drinking in.
Love is something that's been so romanticized and made so common and skewed so badly that it's almost laughable to mention it. However love, true, pure love, is something that we need. We need it to survive. If we let hatred into our hearts, and we let it consume us, and we let it guide us, then we are taking the love from other people, and we are leading others, whether we realize it or not, down the same path of hate we now walk. Sometimes, rarely, hatred is opposed, shut out; but far too often, it is embraced, encouraged, and it swells, and it hurts, and it harms. No good comes of hatred. Really, when you're fifty or sixty or seventy and you're looking back at your life, are you going to reminisce on, and be proud of, all the people you made fun of, all the people you hurt? You won't gain anything from cruelty. Only love and kindness will set you on the right path.
Do you want to be able to walk with your head high, to know that people think you're kind and good and wonderful? Then stop hating and teasing. Stop drinking, stop doing drugs. Stop defying your teachers. Stop yelling and swearing. Stop judging.
Start loving.